Kitabı oku: «Sundry Accounts», sayfa 8
"But I am a stranger to you. I don't wish to pry. I – "
"Please do! Then perhaps you won't be worrying later on about – about me if you know the truth now."
With one hand Miss Smith turned back the edge of the cape, enlarging slightly the opening, and what she saw shocked her more deeply than though she had beheld some hideous mutilation. She saw that about both of the girl's wrists were snugly strapped broad leather bands, designed something after the fashion of the armlets sometimes worn by athletes and artisans, excepting that here the buckle fastenings were set upon the tops of the wrists instead of upon the inner sides; saw, too, that these cuffs were made fast to a wide leather belt, which in an unbroken band encircled the girl's trunk, so that her prisoned forearms were pressed in and confined closely against her body at the line of her waist. Her elbows she might move slightly and her fingers freely; but the hands were held well apart and the fingers in play might touch only the face of the broad girthing, which presumably was made fast by buckles or lacings at her back. As if the better to indicate how firmly she was secured, the wearer of these strange bonds flexed her arm muscles slightly; the result was a little creaking sound as the harness answered the strain. Then the girl relaxed and the sound ended.
"Oh, you poor child!" The gasped exclamation came involuntarily, carrying all the deeper burden of compassion because it was uttered in a half whisper. Quickly she snugged the cloak in to cover the ugly thing she had looked upon. "What have you done that you should be treated so?"
Indignation was in the asking – that and an incredulous disbelief that here had been any wrongdoing.
"It isn't what I've done – exactly. I imagine it is their fear of what they think I might do if my hands were free."
"But where are you going? Where are these people taking you? You're no criminal. I know you're not. You couldn't be!"
"I am being taken to a place up the road to be confined as a dangerous lunatic."
In the accenting of the words was no trace of rebellion or even of self-pity, but merely there was the dead weight and numbness of a hopeless resignation to make the words sound flat and listless.
"I don't believe one word of it!" exclaimed Miss Smith, then broke off short, realizing that the shock of the girl's piteous admission had sent her own voice lifting and that now she had a second listener. The woman diagonally across from her was sitting bolt upright and a pair of small eyes were narrowing upon her in a squint of watchful and hostile suspicion. Instantly she stood up – a small, competent, determined body.
"I'll be back," she stated, disregarding the elder woman and speaking to the younger. "And I'm going to find out more about you, too, before I'm done."
Her step, departing, was brisk and resolute.
In the aisle near the forward door she encountered the flagman.
"There is a man in the smoker I must see at once," she said. "Will you please go in there and find him and tell him I wish – no, never mind. I see him coming now."
She went a step or two on to meet the person she sought, halting him in the untenanted space at the end of the coach.
"I want to speak with you, please," she began.
"Well, you'll have to hurry," he told her, "because I'm getting off with my party in less'n five minutes from now. What was it you wanted to say to me?"
"That young girl yonder – I became interested in her. I thought perhaps she had been injured. Then more or less by chance I found out the true facts. I spoke to her; she told me a little about her plight."
"Well, if you've been talking to her what's the big idea in talking to me?"
His tone was churlish.
"This isn't mere vulgar curiosity on my part. I have a perfectly proper motive, I think, in inquiring into her case. What is her name."
"Margaret Vinsolving."
"Spell it for me, please – the last name?"
He spelled it out, and she after him to fix it in her mind.
"Where does she live – I mean where is her home?"
"Village of Pleasantdale, this state," shortly.
"Who are her people?"
"She's got a mother and that's all, far as I know."
"What asylum are you taking her to?"
"No asylum. We're taking her to Doctor Shorter's Sanitarium back of Peekskill two miles – Dr. Clement Shorter, specialist in nervous disorders – he's the head."
"It is a private place then and not a state asylum?"
"You said it."
"You are connected with this Doctor Shorter's place, I assume?"
"Yep."
"In what capacity?"
"Oh, sort of an outside man – look after the grounds and help out generally with the patients and all. And now, say, lady, if that'll satisfy you I guess I better be stepping along. I got to see about getting this here patient and the matron off the train; that's the matron that's setting with her."
"Just a moment more, please."
She felt in a fob set under the cuff of her left sleeve and brought forth a small gold badge and held it cupped in her gloved hand for him to see. As he bent his head and made out the meaning of the badge the gruff air dropped from him magically.
"Oh, I see!" he said. "Secret Service, eh? All right, ma'am, what more did you want to know? Only I'd ask you speak brisk because there ain't so much time."
"Tell me briefly what you know of that child."
"Not such a lot, excepting she's a dangerous lunatic, having been legally adjudged so yestiddy. And her mother's paying for her keep at a high-class place where she can have special treatment and special care instead of letting her be put away in one of the state asylums. And so I'm taking her there – me and the matron yonder. That's about all, I guess."
"I don't believe it."
"You don't believe what?"
He was beginning to bristle anew.
"Don't believe she is insane at all, much less dangerously so. Why, I've just been talking with her. We exchanged only a few words, but in all that she said she was so perfectly rational, so perfectly sensible. Besides, one has only to look at her to feel sure some terrible mistake or some terrible injustice is being done. Surely there is nothing eccentric, nothing erratic about her; now is there? You must have been studying her. Don't you yourself feel that there might have been something wrong about her commitment?"
He shook his head.
"Not a chancet. Everything's been positively regular and aboveboard. You can't railroad folks into Doctor Shorter's place; he's got too high a standing. Shorter takes no chances with anybody."
"But she seemed so absolutely normal in speech, manner – everything. I've seen insane persons before now and – "
"Excuse me, but about how many have you seen?"
"Not many, I admit, but – "
"Well, excuse me again, lady, but I thought as much. Well, I have – plenty of 'em I've seen in my time. See 'em every day for the matter of that. Listen to me! For instance, now, we've got a case up there with us now. He's been there going on fifteen years; used to be a preacher, highly educated and all that. Look at him and you wouldn't see a thing out of the way with him except that he'd be wearing a strait-jacket. Talk to him for maybe a week and you wouldn't notice a single thing wrong about him. He'd just strike you all along as being one of the nicest, mildest, old Christian gents you ever met up with in your whole life. But get him on a certain subject; just mention a certain word to him and he'd tear your throat out with his bare hands if he could get at you."
"But this poor girl, surely her case is different? Was it really necessary to bind her hands as you've done?"
"Lady, about these here violent ones you can't never tell. Me, I never saw her in my life before I went down after her this morning, and up to now she hasn't made me a mite of trouble. But I had my warning from them that turned her over to me. Anyhow, all I needed was the story of her own mother, as fine a lady as you'd care to see and just about broken-hearted over all this. You'd think from the way she carried on she was the one that was being put away and not the daughter. And yet, what did the mother swear to on her sacred oath? She swore to the daughter's having tried, not once but half a dozen separate times to kill her, till she was afraid for her own life – positively!
"Besides, lady, it's been my experience, and I've had a heap of it, that it's the quiet-acting ones that are apt to strike the quickest and do the most damage when the fit comes on 'em. So taking everything into consideration, I felt like as if I oughter be purty careful handling her on this trip. But she's all right. Probably nobody on this train, outside of you, knows there's anything wrong with her and it was accidental-like, so you tell me, the way you come to find out – you taking that seat alongside her and getting into talk with her whilst I was in yonder smoking. It's better she should be under control thataway than that she should maybe get a spell on her right here in this car or somewheres and me be forced to hold her down by main strength and possibly have to handle her pretty rough. I put it to you now, ain't it? The way she's fixed she can't harm herself nor no one else. You take it from me, lady, that while I've been in this business for so long I don't always get my private feelings harrowed up over the case of a nice-looking young girl like this one is, like an outsider might, still at that I ain't hard-hearted and I ain't aiming to be severe just because I can. But what else is there for me to do except what I'm doing? I ask you. Say, it's funny she talked to you. She ain't said hardly a word to us since she started. Didn't even say nothing when I put the hobbles on her."
"I'm not questioning your judgment," said Miss Smith, "but she is so pitiable! She seemed to me like some dumb, frightened, wild creature caught in a trap. And despite what you say I'm sure she can't be mad. Please, may I speak with her again – if she herself doesn't mind?"
"I'm afeared it's too late," he said not unkindly. "We're slowing down for Peekskill now. I'll have to step lively as it is to get 'em off shipshape. But if you've still got any doubts left in your mind you can look up the court records at White Plains. You'll find everything's been done positively legal and regular. And if you should want to reach me any time to find out how she's getting along or anything like that, why my name is Abram Foley, care of Doctor Shorter."
He cast this farewell information back over his shoulder as he hurried from her.
Half convinced yet doubting still, and filled wholly with an overmastering pity, Miss Smith stood where she was while the train jerkily came to a standstill. There she stayed, watching, as the trio quitted the car. Past her where she stood the man Foley led the way, burdened with the heavy suitcase. Next came his charge, walking steadily erect, mercifully cloaked to her knees in the blue garment; and the matron, in turn behind her, bearing a hand bag and an odd parcel or two. About the departing group a casual onlooker would have sensed nothing unusual. But our Miss Smith, knowing what she did know, held a clenched hand to the lump that had formed in her throat. She was minded to speak in farewell to the prisoner, and yet a second impulse held her mute.
She fell in behind the three of them though, following as far as the platform, being minded to witness the last visible act of the tragedy upon which she had stumbled. Her eyes and her heart went with them as they crossed through the open shed of the station, the man still leading, the matron with one hand guiding their unresisting ward toward where a closed automobile, a sort of hybrid between a town car and an ambulance, was drawn up on the driveway just beyond the eaves of the building. A driver in a gray livery opened the door of the car for its occupants.
Alongside the automobile the girl swung herself round, her head thrown back, as a felon might face about at the gateway of his prison – for a last view of the free world he was leaving behind. Seemingly the vigilant woman misinterpreted this movement as the first indication of a spirit of kindling obstinacy. Alarmed, she caught at the girl to restrain her. Her grasp closed upon the shoulder of the cape and as the wrenched garment came away in her hand the prisoner stood revealed in her bonds – a slim graceful figure, for all the disfigurement of the clumsy harness work which fettered her.
An instant later the cape had been replaced upon her shoulders, hiding her state from curious eyes, but in that same brief space of time she must have seen leaning from the train, which now again was in motion, the shape of her unknown champion, for she nodded her head as though in gratitude and good-by and her white face suddenly was lighted with what the passenger upon the car platform, seeing this through a sudden mist of tears, thought to be the bravest, most pitiable smile that ever she had seen.
The train doubled round an abrupt curve, in the sharpness of its swing almost throwing her off her feet, and when she had regained her balance and looked again the station was furlongs behind her, hidden from sight by intervening buildings.
It was that smile of farewell which acted as a flux to carry into the recipient's mind a resolution already forming. Into things her emotions were likely to lead her headlong and impetuously, but for a way out of them this somewhat unusual young woman named Smith generally had for her guide a certain clear quality of reasoning, backed by an intuition which helped her frequently to achieve satisfactory results. So it was with her in this instance.
Her share of the business in Troy completed, as speedily it was, she stayed in Albany for half a day on her way back and called upon the governor. At first sight he liked her, for her good looks, for her trigness, her directness and more than any of these for the excellent mental poise which so patently was a part of her. The outcome of her visit to him and his enthusiastic admiration for her was that the district attorney of Westchester County shortly thereafter instituted an investigation, the chief fruitage of that investigation being embodied in a somewhat longish letter from him, which Miss Smith read in her studio apartment one afternoon perhaps three weeks after the date of her meeting on trainboard with that adjudged maniac, the girl Margaret Vinsolving.
To the letter was a polite preamble. She skipped it. We may do well to follow her lead and come to the body of it, which ran like this:
"Mrs. Janet Vinsolving is the widow of a colonel in our Regular Army. My information is that she is a woman of culture and refinement. Since the death of her husband some eight years ago she has been residing in a small home which she owns in the outskirts of Pleasantdale village in this county. From the fact that she keeps no servants and from other facts brought to me I gather that she is in very modest circumstances. She has been living quite alone except for the daughter, Margaret, who is her only child. The daughter was educated in the public schools of the county. Lately she has been studying applied designing with a view to becoming an interior decorator."
"Ah, now I know another reason why I was drawn to her!" interpolated the reader, speaking to herself. With heightened interest she read on:
"On inquiry it appears that among her former schoolmates and teachers she was popular, though not inclined to make intimates. She is reputed to have been rather high-tempered, but seemingly throughout her childhood and young girlhood there was nothing about her conduct or appearance to indicate a disordered mind. Indeed there was no suggestion of mental aberration on her part from any source until within the past month. However, I should add that it is rather hard to arrive at any accurate estimate of her general behavior by reason of the fact that mother and daughter led so secluded a life. They had acquaintances in the community, but apparently no close friends there or elsewhere.
"About four weeks ago, on the twenty-eighth of last month to be exact, the mother, described to me as being in a state of great distress, visited Justice Cannavan, then sitting in chambers at White Plains, and asking for a private interview with him, requested an inquiry into the sanity of the girl Margaret, with a view, as she explained, of protecting her own life. Her daughter, she alleged, had without warning developed a homicidal tendency aimed at the applicant.
"According to Mrs. Vinsolving, the girl, who always theretofore had been a devoted and affectionate child, had made at least five separate and distinct attempts to kill her, first by putting poison into her food and later by attempting to strangle her at night in her bed. Next only to a natural desire to have her own physical safety insured, the mother was apparently inspired by a wish to surround the truth regarding her beloved child's aberration with as much secrecy as possible. At the same time she realized that a certain amount of publicity was inevitable.
"Acting under the statutes, the justice appointed two reputable practicing physicians of the county, namely Dr. Ernest Malt, of Wincorah, and Dr. James P. McGlore, of Pleasantdale, to sit as a commission for the purpose of inquiring into Miss Vinsolving's mental state. The mother, still exhibiting every evidence of maternal grief, appeared before these gentlemen and repeated in detail the account of the attacks made upon her, as previously described to His Honor.
"The girl was then brought before the commission. It was explained to her that under the law she had the right to demand a hearing in open court before a jury chosen to pass upon her sanity. This she waived, but from this point on throughout the inquiry she steadfastly declined to make answers to the questions propounded to her by the members of the commission in an effort to ascertain her mental status, but on the contrary persistently maintained a silence which they interpreted as a phase of insane cunning characteristic of a type of abnormality not often encountered, but in their opinion the more sinister and significant because of its rarity.
"They accordingly drew up a finding setting forth that in their opinion and deliberate judgment the unfortunate young woman was suffering from a progressive and therefore probably incurable form of dementia. The justice immediately signed the necessary orders for her detention and commitment. To save the daughter from being sent to a state institution the mother provided funds sufficient for her care at Doctor Shorter's sanitarium, an establishment of unimpeachable reputation, and she accordingly was taken there in proper custody, as you yourself are aware.
"My information from the sanitarium, which I procured in response to your request, and the governor's instructions to me for a full inquiry into all the circumstances is that since her confinement Miss Vinsolving has been under constant observation. She has been orderly and obedient and except for slightly melancholic tendencies, which might easily be provoked by the nature of her environment, is quite natural in her behavior. I draw the inference, however, that this docility may be merely the forerunner of an outburst at any time.
"Altogether my investigation convinces me that no miscarriage of the law could possibly have occurred in this instance. There is certainly no ground for suspecting that the mother had any ulterior or improper motive in seeking to have her daughter and sole companion deprived of liberty. Neither the mother nor any other person alive can hope to profit in a financial sense by reason of the girl's temporary or permanent detention.
"The girl herself is without means of her own. The mother for her maintenance is largely dependent upon the pension she receives from the United States Government. The girl had no income or estate of her own and no expectancy of any inheritance from any imaginable source other than the small estate she will legally inherit at the death of her mother. Finally I may add that nowhere in the case has there developed any suggestion of a scandal in the life of mother or daughter or of any clandestine love affair on the part of either.
"These briefly are the available facts as compiled by a trustworthy member of my staff, Assistant District Attorney Horace Wilkes, to whom I detailed the duty of making a painstaking inquiry. If I may hereafter be of service to you in this matter or any other matter, kindly command me. I have the honor to be,
"Yours etc., etc."
With a little gesture of despairful resignation Miss Smith laid the letter down. Well, there was nothing more she could do; nothing more to be done. She had come to a blind end. The proof was conclusive of the worst. But in her thoughts, waking and sleeping, persisted the image of that gallant, pathetic little figure which she had seen last at the Peekskill station, bound, helpless, alone and all so courageously facing what to most of us would be worse than death itself. Awake or in sleep she could not get it out of her mind.
At length one night following on a day which for the greater part she had spent in a study of the somewhat curious laws that in New York State – as well as in divers other states of the Union – govern the procedure touching certain classes coming within purview of the code, she awoke in the little hours preceding the dawn to find herself saying aloud: "There's something wrong – there must be – there has to be!"
Until daylight and after she lay there planning a course of action until finally she had it completed. True, it was a grasping at feeble straws, but even so she meant to follow along the only course which seemed open to her.
First she did some long-distance telephoning. Then immediately after breakfast she sent to the garage round the corner for her runabout and in it she rode up through the city and on into Westchester, now beginning to flaunt the circus colors of a gorgeous Indian summer. An hour and a half of steady driving brought her to the village of Pleasantdale. She found it a place well named, seeing that it was tucked down in a cove among the hills between the Hudson on the one side and the Sound on the other.
Following the directions given her by a lone policeman on duty in the tiny public square, she ran two blocks along the main street and drew up where a window sign giving name and hours advertised that James P. McGlore, M.D., here professionally received patients in his office on the lower floor of his place of residence. A maidservant answered the caller's knock, and showing her into a chamber furnished like a parlor which had started out to be a reception room and then had tried – too late – to change back again into a parlor, bade her wait. She did not have long to wait. Almost immediately an inner door opened and in the opening appeared the short and blocky figure of a somewhat elderly, old-fashioned-looking man with a square homely face – a face which instantly she classified as belonging to a rather stupid, very dogmatic and utterly honest man. He had outjutting, belligerent eyebrows and a stubborn underjaw that was badly undershot. He spoke as he entered and his tone was noticeably not cordial.
"The girl tells me your name is Smith. I suppose from that you're the young person that the district attorney telephoned me about an hour or so ago. Well, how can I serve you?"
"Perhaps, doctor, the district attorney told you I had interested myself in the case of the Vinsolving girl – Margaret Vinsolving," she began. "I had intended to call also upon your associate, Doctor Malt, over at Wincorah, but I learn he is away."
"Yes, yes," he said with a sort of hurried petulance. "Know all about that. Malt's like a lot of these young new physicians – always running off on vacations. Mustn't hold me responsible for his absences. Got no time to think about the other fellow. Own affairs are enough – keep me busy. Well, go on, why don't you? You were speaking of the Vinsolving girl. Well, what of her?"
"I was saying that I had interested myself in her case and – "
He snapped in: "One moment. Let's get this all straightened out before we start. May I inquire if you are closely related to the young person in question?"
"I am not. I never saw her but once."
"Are you by any chance a close friend of the young woman?"
He towered over her, for she was seated and he had not offered to sit down. Indeed throughout the interview he remained standing.
Looking up at him, where he glowered above her, she answered back promptly:
"As I was saying, I never saw her but once – that was on the day she was carried away to be placed in confinement. So I cannot call myself her friend exactly, though I would like to be her friend. It was because of the sympathy which her position – and I might add, her personality – roused in me that I have taken the liberty of coming here to see you about her."
Under his breath he growled and grunted and puffed certain sounds. She caught the purport of at least two of the words.
"Pardon me, doctor," she said briskly, "but I am not an amateur philanthropist. I trust I'm not an amateur anything. I am a business woman earning my own living by my own labors and I pay taxes and for the past year or so I have been a citizen and a voter. Please do not regard me merely as an officious meddler – a busybody with nothing to do except to mind other people's affairs. It was quite by chance that I came upon this poor child and learned something of her unhappy state."
The choleric brows went up like twin stress marks accenting unspoken skepticism.
"A child – of twenty-four?" he commented ironically.
"A child, measured by my age or yours. As I told you, I met her quite accidentally. She appealed to me so – such a plucky, helpless, friendless little thing she seemed with those hideous leather straps binding her."
"Do you mean to imply that she was being mistreated by those who had her in charge?"
"No, her escorts – or attendants or warders or guards or whatever one might call them – seemed kindly enough, according to their lights. But she was so quiet, so passive that I – "
"Well, would you expect anyone who felt a proper sense of responsibility to suffer dangerous maniacs to run at large without restraint or control of any sort upon their limbs and their actions?"
"But, doctor, that is just the point – are you so entirely sure that she is a dangerous maniac? That is what I want to ask you – whether there isn't a possibility, however remote, that a mistake may conceivably have been made? Please don't misunderstand me," she interjected quickly, seeing how he – already stiff and bristly – had at her words stiffened and bristled still more. "I do not mean to intimate that anything unethical has been done. In fact I am quite sure that everything has been quite ethical. And I am not questioning your professional standing or decrying your abilities.
"But as I understand it, neither you nor Doctor Malt is avowedly an alienist. I assume that neither of you has ever specialized in nervous or mental disorders. Such being the case, don't you agree with me – this idea has just occurred to me – that if an alienist, a man especially versed in these things rather than a general practitioner, however experienced and competent, were called in even now – "
"And you just said you were not reflecting upon my professional abilities!"
His tone was heavily sarcastic.
"Of course I am not! I beg your pardon if my poor choice of language has conveyed any such impression. What I am trying to get at, doctor, in my inexpert way, is that I talked with this girl, and while I exchanged only a few words with her, nevertheless what she said – yes, and her bearing as well, her look, everything about her – impressed me as being entirely rational."
He fixed her with a hostile glare and at her he aimed a blunt gimlet of a forefinger.
"Are you quite sure you are entirely sane yourself?"
"I trust I am fairly normal."
"Got any little funny quirks in your brain? Any little temperamental crotchets in which you differ from the run of people round you? Think now!"
"Well," she confessed, "I don't like cats – I hate cats. And I don't like figured wall paper. And I don't like – "
"That will be sufficient. Take the first point: You hate cats. On that count alone any confirmed cat lover would regard you as being as crazy as a March hare. But until you start going round trying to kill other people's cats or trying to kill other people who own cats there's probably no danger that anyone will prefer charges of lunacy against you and have you locked up."
She smiled a little in spite of her earnestness.
"Perhaps it is symptomatic of a lesion in my brain that I should be concerning myself in the case of a strange girl whom I have seen but once – is that also in your thoughts, Doctor McGlore?"
"We'll waive that," he said. "For the sake of argument we'll concede that your indicative peculiarities assume a harmless phase at present. But this Vinsolving girl's case is different – hers were not harmless. Her acts were amply conclusive to establish proof of her mental condition."
"From the district attorney's statement to me I rather got the impression that she did not indulge in any abnormal conduct while before you for examination."
"Did he tell you of her blank refusal to answer the simplest of the questions my associate and I put to her?"
"Doctor," she countered, seeking to woo him into a better humor, "would you construe silence on a woman's part as necessarily a mark of insanity? It is a rare thing, I concede. But might it not sometimes be an admirable thing as well?"
But this gruff old man was not to be cajoled into pleasanter channels than the course his mood steered for him.
"We'll waive that too. Anyhow, the mother's evidence was enough."
"But was there anything else other than the mother's unsupported story for you to go on and be guided by?"
"What else was needed?" he retorted angrily. "What motive could the mother have except the motives that were prompted by mother love? That was a devoted, desolated woman if ever I saw one. Look here! A daughter without cause suddenly turns upon her mother and tries to kill her. Well, then, either she's turned criminal or she has gone crazy!
